Warren Murphy: Identity Crisis

Folcroft Sanitarium offered a model scenario. One route in and one out. Off the beaten track. And the phone lines were up on poles, not buried in underground pipe.

It should have been a textbook seizure. Go in hard and loud, and flash the warrant. Shout down any resistance. Get the job done.

Folcroft was a private hospital, for Christ's sake. It should have gone by the book.

It started going wrong the second they raced through the open gates, Koldstad's burgundy Taurus in the lead.

They had surveyed the area by helicopter the day before. The fact that the hospital fronted Long Island Sound had been worrisome, but no escape boat was tied up at the dock. Hell, the dock was so decrepit, it looked all set to fall into the water.

A water escape was ruled highly improbable.

But when they came through the gates, Koldstad was shocked to see boats converging on the same rickety dock. Sleek white Cigarette boats, the kind popular with your basic drug runner.

It was Koldstad's absolute worst-case scenario. They had sailed into the middle of a drug drop.

"What do we do?" asked the train, Greenwood. "We're outnumbered."

"Too late to worry about that," Koldstad bit out. Into his walkie-talkie, he shouted, "It's a damn drop! We gotta take them down before we can secure the site. Everybody out-now!"

The vehicles screamed, stewing to a crowded stop. Doors popped. Agents piled out, weapons coming up. They crouched behind their vehicles, pistols steady in two-handed marksman's grips. Koldstad took up a kneeling position with his arms stretched out, the butt of his 9mm Taurus resting on the hood of his car, the engine block protecting his body. Beside him Greenwood copied the stance. He licked his dewy upper lip nervously.

The boats didn't bother with the dock. They ran aground on the shelf of mud below the grass, and men jumped out in blacksuits and cradling Uzis and shotguns. Their faces were masked-black pullover hoods that covered the entire head except for a filly oblong around the eyes.

From behind the shelter of his Taurus, Koldstad called out, "Drop your weapons!" He didn't say IRS. The manual called for it, but hard experience had taught him those three letters usually incited a noncompliant taxpayer to greater violence.

The men from the boats dropped to their bellies and out of the line of fire before a single warning shot could be squeezed off.

"Damn!" Koldstad said. He got down and tried to see under the car. There was no sign of them. They were good.

Greenwood leaned down, his voice excited. "I think I can reconnoiter over to their position by crawling on my belly, sir."

"Quiet!" Koldstad snapped.

Then the first perforated gun barrel poked over the slope of the grass. It angled around like a questing snout.

Greenwood got down on his hands and knees, trying to peer around the right front tire.

Koldstad opened his mouth to warn him. Too late.

The questing perforated snout popped once.

A bullet came and shredded the tread before it mushroomed into Greenwood's brain. It exited, carrying away a piece of skull and scalp the size of a human palm. Greenwood rocked back as if kicked, splaying onto the ground like a beached starfish.

"Open fire!" Koldstead screamed.

After that it was bedlam. The air shivered and shook with screaming rounds. Hot shell casings rolled smoking on the ground. The grassy clods at the edge of the lawn jumped like stung frogs. The return fire was murderous. Punch holes began appearing on the other side of the official IRS vehicles.

The IRS with their handguns and small arms were no match for the superior fire being directed at them. Their only advantage was in having the high ground. Koldstad ordered his men to lay down a sustained fire so the enemy didn't dare poke their heads up to aim.

That didn't stop them. The enemy just angled their weapons up and fired blindly. The sedan, van and delivery truck took most of the damage. Safety glass showered in nuggets. Tires burst and hissed until they were flat. Under the blazing onslaught, the three vehicles actually drummed and rocked on their springs.

"Get behind your engine blocks!" Koldstad ordered.

A man, moving to obey, caught one in the ankle. Screaming, he grabbed himself.

Koldstad shot to pieces a hand trying to angle an Uzi at them in return. That only seemed to make them madder because there came a lull while the enemy regrouped, and suddenly they were coming up over the grass slope, yelling and firing like damn Comanches.

"What's that they're yelling?" Koldstad cried over the din.

No one answered. They were too busy firing back.

Koldstad joined the fire storm. He picked a man at random and perforated his thigh. The man stumbled and rolled. On the black front of his battle suit, there was a white smudge. Koldstad caught a glimpse of it as the man fell. It was unreadable, but familiar.

"Cease fire! Cease fire!" Koldstad ordered.

An agent man turned to call, "What?"

"I said cease your damn shooting!"

But it was too late. No one paid any attention. His men were too busy trying to preserve their lives.

"IRS! IRS!" Koldstad shouted. "Dammit, we're with the Internal Revenue Service!"

The window glass was really flying now.

Abruptly Koldstad fell on the body of Greenwood, stripping him of his blue windbreaker with the letters IRS stenciled on the back. The letters were stained with blood now.

Koldstad took a chance. He reached up and snapped off the car antenna. A bullet gouged the car hood less than a foot from his eager fingers. Then he hung the jacket on the thing and with both hands paid it up so it stuck up above the line of the hood.

It began kicking and twitching under the lash of bullets.

"Dammit, read the letters!" Koldstad said through too-tight teeth.

Then, to make matters worse, his agents began running out of ammo.

They looked at him with sick, confused eyes.

Koldstad dropped the antenna and, as the gunmen in black came surging around from both directions, he lifted his hands above his head.

"We surrender!"

His men, helpless, followed suit. Except for those who were trying to hide under the chassis of their vehicles.

A thick-set man in a shapeless white hood came around with a shotgun.

"Freeze!" he yelled, finger white on the trigger. "DEA!"

"IRS!" Koldstad screamed back. "We're the goddamn IRS!"

There was a moment of stunned silence. Jaws dropped slowly, and faces turned gray and then drained bone white.

A DEA man vomited violently. Others began retching. His own face fish white, Jack Koldstad climbed to his feet. But only after the white finger on the shotgun trigger relaxed and turned pink again.

"You in charge here?" Koldstad demanded.

The thick man stripped off his white hood to reveal a shaggy red beard and no-nonsense eyes. "Tardo. Drug Enforcement Administration."

"Koldstad. IRS. You just shot the shit out of three official cars, not to mention my trainee."

"You drew down on us first," Tardo pointed out, his voice surly.

"You barbarians were storming ashore like this was the beach at Normandy," Koldstad said hotly. "Of course we drew down on you first. We thought you were drug runners."

"Like hell."

"We're seizing this hospital for failure to report income in excess of ten thousand dollars and for violating Title 21, Section 881 of the United States Code."

Tardo's blunt face darkened. "This is a suspected turkey-drug factory. It's ours."

"What do you base that on?"

"A telephone tipoff that large wire transfers go through the Folcroft bank account regularly."

Koldstad blinked. "That's what red-flagged us, too. But we have jurisdiction."

"No way. This is our bust."

The two men stepped up to each other until their noses almost met. They glared. Around them their men fingered their weapons uneasily.